Monthly Archives : December 2016

Obama and Israel, strike and counterstrike


    UN Security Council Resolution 2334 was the first prong of outgoing US President Barack Obama’s lame duck campaign against Israel.     Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Wednesday was the second.     On January 15, stage 3 will commence in Paris. At France’s lame duck President Francois Hollande’s international conference, the foreign ministers of some…

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Obama’s war against America


      In 1989, following her tenure as President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick described how the Palestinians have used the UN to destroy Israel.     Following outgoing US President Barack Obama’s assault on Israel at the UN Security Council last Friday, longtime UN observer Claudia Rossett wrote an important article at PJMedia where she…

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Israel and the rising new West


  US President Barack Obama has but a month left in office. But he has a month left. And he is using it. In the days remaining, Obama is using the full authority of his office to advance his policies with the hope of rendering permanent his mark on American policy.   Domestically, Obama is working to undercut the capacity…

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David Friedman’s Jewish antagonists


  David Friedman, US President elect Donald Trump’s choice to serve as the next US ambassador to Israel has his work cut out for him.     Right after Trump announced his appointment, the nameless bureaucrats at the State Department mounted a rebellion. Speaking to the Jerusalem Post, the permanent members of the State Department’s Israel policy shop let it…

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A Trumpian Israeli initiative


  US President-elect Donald Trump won’t even take office for another month, but he has already killed the status quo.     During the election, Trump trounced the untouchable consensus on NATO’s post-Cold War purpose. Questioning the purpose of an alliance formed to fight a war that ended 25 years ago is indisputably a reasonable thing to do. But until…

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The Left’s never-ending war


  The push among the American Left to discredit the results of last month’s presidential election entered a new phase last Friday with the White House’s announcement that outgoing US President Barack Obama has ordered US intelligence agencies to review evidence of Russian hacking in last month’s elections on behalf of President-elect Donald Trump.     The investigation itself is…

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Israel’s first move with the Trump administration


    Israeli officials are thrilled with the national security team that US President-elect Donald Trump is assembling. And they are right to be. The question now is how Israel should respond to the opportunity they present us with.     The one issue that brings together all of the top officials Trump has named so far to his national…

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Michael Flynn and Trump’s foreign policy


  In the US and around the world, people are anxiously awaiting US President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement of his choice to serve as secretary of state. There is no doubt that Trump’s choice for the position will tell us a great deal about the direction his foreign policy is likely to take. But the fact is that we already have…

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Israel’s constitutional identity crisis


  Israel’s coalition crisis over the settlement’s regulation bill is not a normal power struggle between overweening politicians. It is not popularity contest between Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and his Kulanu Party and Education Minister Naftali Bennett and his Bayit Yehudi Party.     It is also not about contenders to the helm challenging Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s political primacy.…

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